Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Meeting with the Children

Today I had my first encounter with Roma children. I was in one of the largest shopping malls in Slovakia with two other exchange students, one from Arizona and one from British Columbia, Canada. We were sitting on a bench, eating ice cream and watching the people pass, just passing a long afternoon after school.

Suddenly a little girl, about 5 or 6 in age carrying a small black puppy stood in front of us. She had on a pink sweater, wrong side out, and some dirt smeared down her cheek. She had black hair, brown skin, and huge black eyes. She said something in slovak to us. All three of us blinked stupidly for a moment. The shock of seeing such a girl not 2 feet from us and then all that slovak just seemed to freeze us. Out of her mess of words though I caught "hladna" and "pät korun". Hladna means hungry and pät korun means 5 crowns, the slovak currency. I said this to my two companions. We all knew then. She was a Roma girl, begging for money.

Now any American would have quickly dived into their purse (I would at least hope so) and fished out some money. But we all paused, for many reasons. We sat and discussed what we should do. First of all, it is known that all Roma beg for money. Not because they are poor, but because they see no need to work when they get generous amounts of cash from the government every year and then can send their children out to collect in public places.

As we were discussing what to do, she moved to other people passing, holding out her hand and speaking quickly to them. Behind us on the other side of the hall her brother was doing the same thing.

In the end we all finally dug into our pockets and fished out some spare coins. None of us handed over any bills. She gladly took our money then showing her brother, they quickly hurried away into the crowd, no doubt to show their parents what they had been able to collect.

I am still torn though about whether I did "the right thing". We all were. After a few minutes my companions fell back into their conversation, as if nothing had happened. But I was shaken, and it took me the rest of the day to get over it. It is the fact that we knew exactly what was going on. Any other tourist or non-native wouldn´t have thought about it too hard but we knew exactly what was happening. The puppy in her hand, shirt wrong side out, begging that she was hungry, all part of the plan. In the end we decided that because we knew, and wern´t oblivious to the fact, that it was ok to give her the little change we had to spare. But then I still didn´t know if what we had done was good. Were we just feeding the Roma people, and doing exactly what they wanted? I try to tell myself no, but in fact we were. They send out their children to collect money via begging, and we handed over the money. It doesn´t matter that we knew, we still couldn´t resist and gave the girl change. I felt like I had just whole heartly supported what the Roma people do, begging for money instead of working. I do not want to support the Roma to be lazy and not work. But in fact I just had.

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident and we left the mall and wandered home. I didn´t tell my host parents what happened, and I don´t plan to. They would most likely scold me for giving money to Roma children and tell me next time to ignore them and tell them to go away, for that is what all the rich here do, they ignore the Roma people.

4 comments:

everjewel
said...

And carrying a puppy, no less! True, Allie, it is hard to know what to do in these situations. But maybe instead of looking at your actions in the huge context of society as a whole, you could look at it on a smaller level... the singular action of one human being giving to antoher. Regardless of her motives- or the motives of her parents who sent her out there- she probably could use the money that you gave her. And she probably faces rejection and scorn all day long, so your small act of kindness was one less time that she had to face that humiliation. The bigger picture that I take from your encounter is how unfair it is that so many children like her are having to endure the humiliation of begging.

Allie, wow. Awareness is very important, as is compassion, and it's hard to know whether you're being compassionate or gullible, isn't it? I would have done the same thing. Keep looking, keep learning, and search for what it is that keeps the Roma from working. Work is essential to a person's sense of worth, and while lazy people do exist, most would rather work given the choice. I'm sure there are layers and layers of circumstances that affect the Romas' condition. Excellent post!